Fortuné (pug)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Madame and Monsieur Bonaparte with a pug. Anonymous illustration, 19th century

Fortuné , also known as Monsieur Fortuné ("Mr. Happy"; exact life dates unknown), was the dog of Joséphine de Beauharnais (1763-1814) and is the most famous pug in France .

Life

After Alexandre de Beauharnais ' death under the guillotine in 1794, his wife Joséphine was also temporarily arrested; in prison she used the pug to carry messages for her children. On March 9, 1796, the widow Beauharnais married the 27-year-old General Napoleon Bonaparte . In a letter to Joséphine from Pistoia dated 8th Messidor, 1796, Napoleon greeted all her friends and their societies as well as the pug: “... and Fortuné, yes, Fortuné! You love everything more than your husband [...]. "

Afterlife

The pug Fortuné , a fashion dog around 1800 , survived in numerous anecdotes . The story that he bit Napoleon in the leg on his wedding night became a traveling legend , to which Anthony Burgess dedicated a detailed scene in a novel in 1974. After an assassination attempt on the consul Napoleon accompanied by his wife Joséphine on December 24, 1800, the pug was credited with saving the couple, and after the consul became Emperor of the French in 1804, Fortuné is said to have bitten the courtiers. For the fact that these stories cannot easily be reconciled with the life of a pug, the legend offers another story: A kitchen dog killed Fortuné and Joséphine then owned a second pug, also called Fortuné.

literature

  • Caroline d'Arjuzon: Hortense de Beauharnais . Calman-Lévy 1897; Reprint n.d. P. 60 f. ISBN 0543956385
  • Frédéric Masson: Joséphine de Beauharnais. 1763-1796 . A. Michel, 1925; P. 215 f.
  • Reiner Jesse: From pugs and other people. AtheneMedia-Verlag, Dinslaken 2012, ISBN 978-3-86992-056-6 , p. 199 f.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Caroline d'Arjuzon: Hortense de Beauharnais . 1867; P. 60
  2. ^ Letters from Napoleon to Joséphine (French)
  3. ^ Anthony Burgess: Napoleon Symphony , German : Napoleon Symphony . Novel in four sentences . Klett-Cotta: Stuttgart 1982; P. 24ff.
  4. ↑ Christina A. Veldhuis: The pug . Berlin 1997; P. 12
  5. ↑ German Mopsclub e. V. (Ed.): 15 years of the Deutscher Mopsclub e. V. 1981-1996 . Association publication 1996; P. 107
  6. ↑ Origin and History of the Pug: Pugs in France ( Memento of May 17, 2008 in the Internet Archive )